FHI Social Practice Lab Director Pedro Lasch will be giving a private talk for Open Society Foundations staff in NYC Feb 28, simulcast to OSF London and Budapest offices. The talk will cover recent development in public art around the world as they relate to activism and social movements, as well as the Social Practice Lab’s signature series ART of the MOOC, co-produced by Duke University and Creative Time, offered for free on Coursera.

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Note: this talk is not open to the general public

The Art of the MOOC: Art in Public Space

Location: Open Society Foundation – New York (simulcast to OSF offices in London and Budapest)

Date: Tuesday, February 28

Time: 12:15 – 1:30 p.m. New York

5:15 – 6:30 p.m. London

6:15 – 7:30 p.m. Budapest

Join the Arts Exchange for a conversation with Pedro Lasch on Public Art and Socially Engaged Practice. Over the coming year, the Arts Exchange will focus a significant aspect of its work on the role of socially engaged arts practices in public space. As Lenny Bernardo has expressed, “Public space is the bedrock of open societies.” Public space does not merely exist; it must be brought into being through the activities of citizens.

Pedro Lasch launched his ART of the MOOC series in late 2015 after many years of success and failure with a wide range of experiments in public art and grassroots pedagogy. Offered on Coursera as free online courses (English & Spanish), this project now has over 15,000 enrolled participants in 134 countries, many of them doing their own public art interventions in rural spaces around the globe, as well as large urban centers like Beijing, New York, Mexico City, London, Tehran, and Berlin. The two inaugural courses were produced with Creative Time (I. Public Art & Pedagogy and II. Activism & Social Movements). Using past experiences, as well as select materials from this recent project and its twenty-nine international guest presenters, this brownbag will be a discussion of key developments in public art as they relate to activism and social practice.

This conversation will also serve as jumping ground for discussions around initiatives that seek to place art within broader social justice concerns, balancing local engagement with processes of transnational collaboration.

Speakers:

Pedro Lasch (US/Mexico/Germany) is a visual artist, Duke University professor, and 16 Beaver organizer. He is also director of the FHI Social Practice Lab at Duke. Solo exhibitions and presentations include Open Routines (QMA), Black Mirror (Nasher), Abstract Nationalism (Phillips Collection) and Art of the MOOC (Creative Time); group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, MASS MoCA (USA); RCA, Hayward Gallery, Baltic (UK); Centro Nacional de las Artes, MUAC, National Palace Gallery (Mexico); Gwangju Biennial (2006), Havana Biennial (2015), Documenta 13 (ANDANDAND, 2012), and 56th Venice Biennale (CTS, 2015). Author of three books, his work has appeared in October Magazine, Saber Ver, Art Forum, ARTnews, Cultural Studies, Rethinking Marxism, The New York Times, and La Jornada.

Rashida Bumbray, Arts Exchange Senior Program Manager, will moderate this discussion.